him why, and what good she had done him, he told
her all the story; and how, before he fell in love with her, he didn't
believe in fairies, or Firedrakes, or caps of darkness, or anything nice
and impossible, but only in horrid useless facts, and chemistry, and
geology, and arithmetic, and mathematics, and even political economy.
And the Firedrake would have made a mouthful of him, then.

So she was delighted when she heard this, almost as much delighted as
she was afraid that he might fail in the most difficult adventure.
For it was one thing to egg on a Remora to kill a Firedrake, and quite
another to find the princes if they were alive, and restore them if they
were dead!

But the prince said he had his plan, and he stayed that night at the
ambassador's. Next morning he rose very early, before anyone else was
up, that he might not have to say "Good-bye" to Lady Rosalind. Then he
flew in a moment to the old lonely castle, where nobody went for fear of
ghosts, ever since the Court retired to Falkenstein.

How still it was, how deserted; not a sign of life, and yet the prince
was looking everywhere _for some living thing_. He hunted the castle
through in vain, and then went out to the stable-yard; but all the dogs,
of course, had been taken away, and the farmers had offered homes to the
poultry. At last, stretched at full length in a sunny place, the prince
found a very old, half-blind, miserable cat. The poor creature was lean,
and its fur had fallen off in patches; it could no longer catch birds,
nor even mice, and there was nobody to give it milk. But cats do
not look far into the future; and this old black cat--Frank was his
name--had got a breakfast somehow, and was happy in the sun. The prince
stood and looked at him pityingly, and he thought that even a sick old
cat was, in some ways, happier than most men.

[Illustration: Page 91]

"Well," said the prince at last, "he could not live long anyway, and it
must be done. He will feel nothing."

Then he drew the sword of sharpness, and with one turn of his wrist cut
the cat's head clean off.

It did not at once change into a beautiful young lady, as perhaps you
expect; no, that was improbable, and, as the prince was in love already,
would have been vastly inconvenient. The dead cat lay there, like any
common cat.

Then the prince built up a heap of straw, with wood on it; and there he
laid poor puss, and set fire to the pile. Very soon there was nothing of